Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Session Prep

"Gnome Stew has hit another home run for the Game Master. Never Unprepared has earned a permanent place in my GM toolbox, right along side the likes of Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering, Hamlet’s Hit Points, Play Dirty, Eureka, and Masks. Highly recommended." -- RoleplayDNA review

Whether you’re new to game mastering or have been running the same campaign since 1974, Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep will help you prepare for games faster, avoid common pitfalls, and have more fun in the process. To our knowledge, this is the first book entirely devoted to the process of prepping for tabletop RPGs.

Never Unprepared breaks game prep down into its component phases—Brainstorming, Selection, Conceptualization, Documentation, and Review—and provides the tools you need to make the most of each phase. If you hate prep, you’ll find ways to make it more enjoyable. If you already have a great system for doing your prep, you’ll learn how to make it even better.

Ten years in the making, Never Unprepared is award-winning author Phil Vecchione’s epic rock ballad to game prep. A project manager and veteran game master, he draws on extensive experience to present flexible systems for developing or optimizing your own unique approach to game prep. Phil’s work has previously appeared on the ENnie Award-winning GMing blog Gnome Stew and in Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters and Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game.

Within Never Unprepared you’ll find prep techniques, utilities, and tips that are applicable to any RPG:

An in-depth look at each phase of session prep, from brainstorming to review

Templates for sessions, scenes, NPCs, and combats that you can modify to fit your gaming style

Practical advice on selecting prep tools, putting them to good use, and scheduling enough time to prepare for every session

How to identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as tips for preparing when you’re short on time—and what to do if everything goes horribly wrong

A comprehensive index to make it easy to find what you need

Like all Engine Publishing titles, Never Unprepared includes four versions of the book: DRM-free, bookmarked, hyperlinked PDF plus EPUB, MOBI, and plain text.

Want to try before you buy? You can download a free 16-page PDF preview of Never Unprepared and read more reviews on the Engine Publishing website.

There is some sound advice in here but it's diluted with filler material and what-works-for-you and generalities to the point that I felt it wasn't of value. It's a shame because I'm sure the author knows A LOT MORE than me about being a GM and prepari [...]

Solidly ok. I really enjoyed Chapter 7 on how to review your prep, and Chapter 10 on creating and using templates for your scenes. For the value of those two chapters, I felt it was probably worth the price and worth my time spent reading the whole [...]

This is project-management for Gamemasters - to me a very motivational and truly helpful little book! As a beginner GM this well structured text helped me get a good grasp and an overview on the different tasks involved in gamemastering. This in turn [...]

This book is pure gold. As the author states quite a few times - most people "do their thing" mostly on intuition. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it's so terrible it actually multiplies your work load.
I like the fact the author takes a st [...]

I have been Gming games for decades and teach project management. It would seem I have little to learn from a short book on GM prep by a project management perspective. I was happily surprised. The book was inspirational -- particularly the system [...]

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